Is Mabon actually an ancient Pagan holiday? And what does Mabon have to do with the Autumn Equinox?

We're going down the rabbit hole of Mabon, the Wheel of the Year, ancient harvest traditions, Samhain, Halloween, and the surprisingly complicated history behind the fall traditions we know today.

Mabon turns out to be a perfect example of how ancient mythology, seasonal traditions, and modern Paganism can get woven together over time. So what’s actually ancient, and what came later? Let’s find out. 🍂

Does the internet feel boring lately? Like you're seeing the same content over and over, just different faces saying the same exact things… in the same exact voice?! Welcome to the Dead Internet Theory. In 2025, Merriam-Webster, Macquarie Dictionary, and the American Dialect Society all named one word their Word of the Year and that word is “slop”. Low-quality AI-generated content flooding the web. This week I’m breaking down what the Dead Internet Theory is, what researchers found about model collapse and digital entropy, why bots now outnumber humans on the internet, and what it means for how you interact online. Plus the psychology behind why we're spiraling about it right now. The theory that used to be dismissed as conspiracy nonsense is now just a description of reality, which honestly, that's scarier than the conspiracy in my humble opinion. Let me know yours! Please rate, review, subscribe, and find me on Instagram @indistinct.pod.

Love ya! 😽

P.S. Yes, I know I said Cloud Fair instead of Cloudflare. I recorded earlier than I’m used to. I was eepy!

Beanie Babies ruined America! Or did they?

There's this guy named Ty Warner who made billions selling you plush toys with heart-shaped tags. But things are messy. The women who actually built his empire got pushed out, erased, and replaced. One of them was literally denied a raise after inventing e-commerce. Another had her design credited stolen by the billionaire who was supposed to be her father figure. And then there are the collectors. All those people who spent their life savings, went bankrupt, and ended up in divorce court fighting over toys.

In this episode, we're getting into the entire Beanie Babies saga. Who was Ty Warner? How did Patricia Roche build a business model he'd take credit for? What did Faith McGowan contribute that went completely uncompensated? How did a college student named Lina Trivedi invent the internet's first viral collectors' bubble? And what the hell happened to all these people?

Plus: which Beanies are actually worth money today and which ones are the rarest. Plus you can find out which Beanie Babies share your birthday on ty.com (I share mine with Secret, a 10-year commemorative red bear, and her poem is absolutely cute as a button!).

This is the story of how one guy made billions while the people who built his empire moved on with way less.

Follow the show on Instagram @indistinct.pod or you can find me @alizahollister.

What is UVB-76, Russia's mysterious radio station that's been broadcasting for nearly 50 years?

On August 27, 2026, it transmitted 25 coded messages in a single day! Just two days after the CIA director made a rare, unannounced visit to Moscow. Coincidence? Who knows? But in a world where geopolitical tensions are already high, one mysterious radio signal becomes a symbol for all our fears.

UVB-76, also known as "The Buzzer," is a shortwave radio station that broadcasts a monotonous buzzing tone 24 hours a day on the frequency 4625 kHz. Occasionally, the buzz stops and a Russian voice reads off cryptic code words and numbers. No one knows what it actually does. Russia won't confirm they even own it. But the closer you look, the wilder the theories become. Is it a military communications channel? A way to keep a frequency reserved? Or is it part of Russia's "Dead Hand" nuclear retaliation system (a doomsday device that triggers automatic nuclear launches if it ever goes silent)?

In this episode, I break down the history of UVB-76 from the Cold War to now, explore why it got busy right before Russia invaded Ukraine, decode the August 27th messages, and dig into the three main theories about what it's actually for.

If you want to talk about UVB-76 or send me your own mystery rabbit hole to investigate, hit me up on Instagram @indistinct.pod or @alizahollister. I'd love to hear what you think.

Please subscribe, rate, and review wherever you're listening. It genuinely helps the show reach more people, and I quite literally need feedback to make a better show for you.

Love ya! 😽

Our wild horses are disappearing and the government is helping.

In 2026, the Bureau of Land Management sold 6,331 wild horses in just 19 months. That’s more than five times their historical average. Most were shipped to Canada for slaughter, in direct violation of a 1971 law created to protect them. But this didn't start with the current administration. It started with a $100 million budget crisis and a woman named Velma Johnston who spent 27 years fighting for these animals.

This episode is the full story: how horses evolved in North America 50 million years ago, how Spanish conquistadors brought them back, how one ordinary secretary mobilized schoolchildren across America to change federal law, and how that law is now being quietly dismantled through bureaucratic loopholes. We're in the Year of the Fire Horse, which is supposed to be a year of authenticity and revolutionary spirit. What's happening to our wild horses is the exact opposite.

Plus: why wild horses matter to you (even if you've never seen one), what you can actually do to help, and why grassroots pressure still works.

Follow the show at @indistinct.pod or find me @alizahollister on Instagram. DM me with your thoughts, questions, or episode ideas. Rate, review, and subscribe wherever you're listening (it means so much).

Love ya! 😽

Did we actually land on the moon, or is it the greatest hoax of all time?

Bill Kaysing thought he had proof. In 1976, he self-published a book claiming NASA faked the Apollo landings to win the Space Race… and for decades, people believed him. But here's the thing about conspiracy theories: they sound really compelling when you don't know how cameras work, how radiation shielding works, or how physics behaves on the moon.

So I'm doing what I do best and that is digging into the rabbit hole (not the black hole) and pulling it apart piece by piece. We're walking through Kaysing's actual claims (radiation, missing craters, no stars, weird shadows, suspicious deaths), the "evidence" that's still floating around online (boot prints, waving flags, Earth size), and the big question everyone asks: if we landed on the moon, why haven't we been back since 1972? The answer might (or might not) surprise you.

What do you think? Did we land on the moon in 1969 or was it a hoax?

Find me on Instagram @indistinct.pod or @alizahollister and let me know your thoughts!

Please rate, review, and share wherever you're listening. It helps more people find the show and helps me feel better about myself.

Love ya! 😽

What really happened behind the scenes of To Catch a Predator? With A24's Primetime starring Robert Pattinson as Chris Hansen hitting theaters September 25, I'm taking you through the entire wild history of the Dateline NBC series before the movie does.

I'm covering how a volunteer group of internet vigilantes called Perverted Justice teamed up with NBC to create the most infamous sting operation on television, who Chris Hansen actually was before he became a meme, and the real numbers behind the show, including the men it put in prison and the cases that fell apart. Then I get into the dark lore: the whistleblower producer whose warnings were ignored, the entrapment acquittal, and the night in Murphy, Texas that ended everything. I also break down what came after, from Hansen's own mugshot era to the YouTube copycat hunters that don’t exactly give me reassurance, plus my honest thoughts on the Predators documentary now streaming on Paramount+ and the question it couldn't answer.

Content note: this episode discusses adults preying on children and includes mention of suicide.

Follow the show on Instagram @indistinct.pod and me @alizahollister, and DM me your take on this one, because I have questions for you. If you're enjoying the show, subscribe, rate, and review wherever you're listening. It helps so much!

Love ya! 😽

Why can't we let go of Charles Manson?

This week I watched My Grandfather Charles Manson on Hulu, a documentary where a DNA test reveals to a family that their father/grandfather is one of the most infamous men in American history, and it sent me down a rabbit hole I was, to be honest, a little scared of. With the anniversary of the Tate-LaBianca murders falling this week, I'm breaking down the machine instead of the murders: how a kid raised by reform schools and prisons learned recruitment from a Dale Carnegie course, how he pulled in educated, middle-class young women during the Summer of Love, and how his song ended up on a Beach Boys record with someone else's name on it. Then it gets stranger. The marriage license he got at 80,. the court fight over his body, the funeral limousine tours that still sell out in 2026, and the mother, Doris Tate, who turned her grief into the victims' rights movement we have today. I also get into cult psychology a little bit, why the research says anyone can be recruited at the wrong moment of their life, my own MLM confession, and whether I felt the pull myself while researching him.

Follow the show on Instagram @indistinct.pod and me @alizahollister. DM me your feedback, your topic suggestions, and your "I almost joined a cult" stories, I read everything. And if you haven't yet, please subscribe, rate, and review wherever you're listening. Love ya! 😽

I Googled the same theory twice, from two different accounts, and got two different answers back.

That sent me down a spiral that ended at a 1998 seed patent co-owned by the USDA, a unanimous Supreme Court ruling about whether you're allowed to save seeds, and a public library that got a letter from the state for lending out tomatoes. We also get into the Cyclospora outbreak, the egg recall, the Driscoll's lawsuit, and the book I hated that made all of it worse.

Content note: the book discussion covers violence, sexual violence including against children, and cruelty toward animals as depicted in the novel.

Come find me on Instagram @indistinct.pod and @alizahollister. My DMs are open for feedback and topic suggestions, and if you're enjoying the show, please subscribe, rate, and review wherever you're listening.

Love ya! 😽

Have you ever been alone in a tent, listening to something huge breathe on the other side of the thin fabric? Because I have, as of last week, and I need to talk about it. ⛺

This week I'm telling you the full story of my camping trip gone sideways, and then digging into what you're actually supposed to do out there, because so much survival "wisdom" is just folklore wearing a ranger hat. When playing dead saves your life and when it makes you a menu item, why moose advice is the exact opposite of bear advice, the myths that will actively get you hurt, and the one horrifying night in Glacier National Park in 1967 that created basically every bear rule we follow today.

Then, once the campfire burns down, it's scary story time: Missing 411. The ex-cop turned Bigfoot researcher who built an empire on people vanishing from national parks, the two cases that started it all, the wendigo, a famous vanishing that turned out to be fiction, what the science and the skeptics actually say, and the genuinely scandalous record-keeping gap the government still hasn't fixed.

Come find the show on Instagram @indistinct.pod and me @alizahollister. Subscribe, rate, and review wherever you're listening, and DM me your wildlife encounters, topic ideas, or a case you think I should cover next.

Love ya! 😽

Mentioned in this episode:

📖Night of the Grizzlies by Jack Olsen